Kings of fire and meat at the world’s best Texas barbecue

It’s 7:52 a.m., but Austin Hebert has long since been sitting in a camping chair by the door of a rickety wooden shack, hoping for the best lunch of his life.

Only for a few minutes has the sun been bathing the treetops on the straight country road and the slightly rusted white sign with the large black letters “BAR-B∙Q” in a warm Texan morning yellow.

Here, in the no man’s land on the outskirts of the city of Fort Worth, there was the most improbable rise in the world of Texas barbecue two years ago: The influential magazine “Texas Monthly” published its list of the best barbecue restaurants in the state again. The choice for number one fell on this Goldee’swhich had been founded just a year earlier by a group of people in their mid-twenties.

Since then, half the nation has been queuing outside their cabin on Dick Price Road in southeast Fort Worth.

Waiting for the fleshy proof of love

It is open Friday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. – or until the goods are “sold out”, i.e. there are no more items.

Austin Hebert has been there since 6:30 am and today’s number one, the first customer to pull up outside Goldee’s. He’s from Louisiana and he’s on a barbecue road trip.

Hebert has traveled everywhere for exceptional grilled meat, because he says he expresses love through food. “And I think barbecue is like the ultimate token of love – because of the extreme amount of work and time it takes.”

In fact, real Texas barbecue is not a quick shot from the hip, as one might easily assume in the country of the colts, but a military-style planned undertaking with almost infinite depth of detail.

At Goldee’s, they grill pork and beef ribs, turkey, sausage and, of course, the most important meat in Texas: brisket. The brisket needs 12 to 14 hours at 93 to a maximum of around 135 degrees in the smoker, produced by meticulously arranged logs of a Quercus stellata oak.

Amir is the man who tends the fire at Goldee’s. It stands under a corrugated iron roof, between two grill ovens as long as minibuses. The grill master creates new wood for the dozens of briskets in the tubes. It’s 10:26 a.m. and the sunlight is making the fine, fragrant clouds of smoke glitter around the smokers.

Almost 200 people have now queued behind Austin Hebert.

When it comes to grilling, everything is strategic

At Goldee’s, the treatment of fire and flesh is a mixture of emotion and science. The large briskets are trimmed so that a good half inch of fat covers the top and they lay streamlined in the smoke, Amir explains. “The aerodynamics of the breast, how we season it, how we put it on the grill. It’s all strategic.”

It’s about the proportion of sugar and salt, about the humidity in the tube. About every detail. After twelve hours, the delicate pink will have given way to a deep black crust, and the brisket itself will have shrunk by half. Amir will open the smoker and touch it, almost tenderly, to see if it’s done. Seared on the outside – in the best way possible – tender and juicy on the inside.

It’s that perfection that draws hundreds of people from across the US to Goldee’s.

Endurance as part of the spectacle

At number 17 in line, Tom Dougherty takes a sip from his second beer can: Indian Pale Ale, brought in the car from his native Minnesota, almost 2000 kilometers north. His office job there isn’t exactly exciting, but waiting for grilled meat in Texas is. “This,” he throws his hands to the side and points to the many men and a few women in camping chairs around him, “will make everything taste so much better”.

Standing out, often in the dry, scorching heat of a Southern summer day, is part of the barbecue spectacle. The longer the line, the greater the expectation. When people travel for days and then queue for four hours to have a basic need met, they become part of something special.

Of course, there are hundreds of other places that have almost as good meat and no wait, says Austin Hebert at the front of the line. But pushing the desire to the limit, along with hundreds of other fans who will miss out on those at the back, makes the event. “The scarcity creates a kind of artificial demand,” philosophizes Hebert.

Chic comes from the kitchen

As the shadows at the booth shorten, something moves. Jonny White steps out of the entrance. A barbecue prodigy. He looks a bit like the nerdy Dustin Henderson from the hit series “Stranger Things”. But here in Fort Worth, they know they’re dealing with one of the Goldee’s founders who writes today’s specials on a chalkboard before they’re “Sold Out” again within hours.

As White speaks to Hebert and other guests, it quickly becomes clear that the unexpected fame hasn’t gone to anyone’s head here. “I’m an owner, but I’m also like a full-time employee,” he says. On Mondays, when Goldee’s is closed, he tries to save the place from decay.

“Every week something breaks in the restaurant. It’s an old building, a lot of people come here and it just gets torn to pieces every week,” says White. Both toilets are broken right now, for which there are now two chemical toilets in the parking lot. For a queue stander from Michigan, that’s no blemish: “They don’t need anything fancy here, because fancy comes from the kitchen,” he says.

A culture older than America itself

The tradition of the barbecue – also Barb-BQ or simply BBQ – in America is older than the USA itself. The first impetus is said to have come from Native American cooking techniques, later came the influence of white settlers and newly adopted traditions of the black, enslaved population added in America.

Today, Americans in the southern USA primarily distinguish between the Carolina Barbecue, the Kansas Barbecue, the Memphis Barbecue and the Texas Barbecue. Some are more about pork, while others have a more pronounced gravy culture. And even within Texas, there are different schools.

The best known is probably the Central Texas barbecue. It comes from the interior of the country, between Fort Worth and the neighboring city of Dallas to the north and San Antonio and Houston to the south. As experienced butchers, German and Czech settlers once preserved tough meat here by smoking it for a long time. One of the forerunners of today’s brisket.

Goldee’s also follows this tradition. The dry seasoning mixes are more important than heavy BBQ sauces, which are used more sparingly. For several decades, the Texas barbecue has not only been booming here as a hip craft, with which young grill masters in particular have made a name for themselves.

The gateway to heaven for meat lovers

It’s a few minutes after 11 a.m. when the heartbeat increases in front of Goldee’s. Heads turn, mouths whisper in ears, people gesture and point to the opening entrance. The camping chairs have long since been stowed away in the trucks, and the stale rest of the beer is thrown out. The gate to heaven for meat lovers opens.

The way in is reminiscent of the long-awaited entry into a new type of roller coaster. Adrenaline for protein. At the counter in the booth, the salespeople already know what you want. A little bit of everything, it should look beautiful, not just for the photo. And beauty doesn’t come cheap: it costs $130. Eight red and white checkered tables with kitchen rolls are waiting next to the counter.

After spending eternity in the smoker, the brisket doesn’t need a knife, the juicy pieces break down into their tasty components in the mouth. The beef rib looks like a dino bone and is cooked to perfection, the smell of smoke perfumes the meat in an almost obscene way, the sausage is equal parts hot and salty.

The men at the next table talk about their meat “experience” like others about red wine from 2009. One thing the group found out: the side dishes – home-baked white bread, coleslaw, beans, semolina with cheese or potato salad – are intentionally a little lighter in the finish to balance the heavy meat. “We are food philosophers,” they explain.

Austin Hebert has long since eaten what he could eat from his huge portion. He stands up to make way for the hundreds who are yet to follow him that day. “Boy, was that good!” he cheers. It was the token of love I had hoped for.

>>> To the barbecue in Texas

– Franklin Barbecue in Austin
– Snow’s BBQ in Lexington
– Panther City in Fort Worth
– Truth Barbecue in Houston

But if you don’t like waiting in line, these places are not for you. You cannot reserve.

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